The Great Course Management Experiment

Admittedly, I am one of those golfers who gains enjoyment from turning myself into a bit of a test laboratory on the golf course.  What fun it is to hypothesize on a mental or physical problem and go test it out using yourself as the guinea pig.  Vet4golfing51 seems very adept at this with his work on the mind-body connection, and I thought I’d give it a try.  I’ve been developing an idea for better scoring and I wanted to try it out on my readers before putting into play.

The experiment is in course management on par-5 holes.  Normally, the majority of alpha males step to the tee on a par-5 and immediately pull driver.  Summoning every ounce of  strength, their effort usually culminates in a massive blow with the ball traveling a long way but not necessarily in the direction desired.  My thought was to try like heck to stay out of trouble on the tee shots which should open up easy birdie opportunities and cut down on the big numbers.  When you hit a fairway bunker or put it in the woods or a hazard, you are most surly looking at bogey or double on the par-5 because of the remaining length you have to cover to make up.  And nothing feels worse than having to scramble on a par-5.

The experiment is to spend the entire week in early June on my Myrtle Beach trip hitting nothing but 3WD on every par-5 hole during the 216 hole golf-a-thon, then try to determine if stroke average improves as a result of keeping the ball in play.

The thought came to me after playing the par-5  17th at Northwest last Sunday.  I had been struggling with my ball striking through 11 holes and made the decision to bench the driver for the balance of the round.  #17 was playing 532 yards into a light breeze.  I made an aggressive pass with a 3WD off the tee and smartly placed one in the left side of the fairway.  Another solid 3WD had me at 109 yards where I hit a smooth pitching wedge pin high for a good look at birdie.  It seemed too easy, but easy is good!  Then I thought back to a 500 yard par-5 on my home course where I used to hit driver all the time and inevitably littered my scorecards with bogeys and doubles.  The last few years I always play it 3WD then 3-iron which leaves me about 100 yards and looking right down the throat of the flag stick.  Par or better is usually the result.

When you think about it, if average par-5s are 500-530 yards, and you can cover 200-230 with a 3WD tee shot, that leaves you with essentially a 300 yard par-4 hole; and who wouldn’t want that?  A long iron second puts me at 100-110 yards, which is my wheelhouse and most course architects don’t leave fairway bunkers back around 100 yards.  Here’s the post with my scoring stats from last year’s trip.  I’m hypothesizing that the scoring average will come down, as will the double bogey total.  The birdie number is more or less dependent on how well I’m putting, so no guarantees there, but the experiment is to eliminate the big numbers.  Driver will still be in play on the par-4s because length is critical, especially on the long ones.

What do you think of this approach?

A Picture Is Truly Worth a Thousand Words

I headed out to the driving range this morning determined to fix the mechanical fault in my golf swing that had created so much angst last weekend.  If you’ll recall, I wrote that last Saturday’s range session had left me with a bad case of the pulls and I was able to slap a partial band-aid on for the following day’s round.  Needless to say but I had completely taken the right side of the golf course out of play.

Armed with the same band-aid, today I proceeded to have one of those range sessions where everything was pure garbage.  These things occasionally happen and I had the common sense to immediately whip out my iPhone and grab some DTL video with my gap wedge, Driver, and 6-iron.  What I captured with the 6-iron was revealing.  See if you can spot the root cause of Mickey Mantle:

The video coupled with a review of a couple DTL setup shots from previous blog posts solved it.  Here is a shot from me last November at Baywood Greens when I was beginning to suffer a case of the pulls:

18th tee at Baywood Greens

Now here’s a shot From Ross Bridge in October when I was hitting it good.  Spot the difference?

On the tee at the par-4 eighth hole.

In the good shot, I’m very balanced at address and in the Baywood Greens shot, my weight has started to slip back toward my heels.  In today’s video, my weight is very much on my heels creating the insight path on the back swing and over the top move on the downswing.  A good move in golf is an athletic move and I was in a poor athletic position.  I could feel something wasn’t right but couldn’t nail it with out the visual.

What’s fascinating and frustrating are how these things keep creeping into my swing, but I understand that golf more than any other sport is a game of never ending adjustments.  Part of the fun and challenge is trying to bank a group of recognizable adjustments that you can call on in short order when something goes a kilter.  So, if you aren’t periodically filming your setup and swing you should be, and the more you can, the more you will learn, and the steadier you’ll play.

Can’t wait to battle test this tomorrow afternoon at Northwest.  Happy Easter everyone!

 

Better Late Than Never?

Has this ever happened to you?  You are in the throws of a terrible range session leaving yourself physically and mentally spent and then you find something on the last ball?  What do you do?

It happened to me last Saturday.  I was looking at dead yanks with everything from the short irons to the driver.  I had started out working the Nine-Shot drill but had to abandon as the controlled fades became straight yanks and the draws were pull hooks.  Finally at my wits end, I tried something that worked and nutted a driver dead straight on the last ball.  How many of you would chalk it up to a random cosmic accident and head for the parking lot and how many would go buy another bucket?  As it turned out, I was exhausted but with the prospect of teeing it up the following morning and having to sleep on such an awful session, my curiosity got the best of me.  I went up and down the line scarfing a couple balls here and there from my fellow range rats; just enough to validate.  Turns out the swing fix straightened out the driver but not the irons.  Better late than never?  Absolutely!  I feel it’s essential to leave the course after play or practice with some form of hope that tomorrow will be better than today and it worked.  My round the following day was a solid ball striking one propped up by a mix of drivers, 3WD, and 3-irons off the tee.  Definitely a more conservative approach than normal, but there’s a lot to be said for getting the ball in play when you’ve got swing foibles as serious as I had lurking just beneath the surface.

What’s your strategy for playing after a shaky range session?

2014 Masters Picks

The Masters green prognostication jacket is out of the closet.  Ready for a changing of the guard?  It’s here and this year’s champion will be a first time major winner.

First, the usual suspects.  Tiger’s body is breaking down and he’s withdrawn.  Phil’s body appears to be giving him more difficulty than in the past and while he’s overcome some significant arthritic issues, age is becoming a factor.  I love watching Phil compete, but he is 43 and will turn 44 in June, and from a major winning standpoint, players hit the wall at 44 (see data from golfmajorchampionships.com below).  Phil still has game and usually turns it on at Augusta no matter what type of form he’s showing in the preceding weeks.  That being said, of all the majors contested since Willie Park won the first Open Championship in 1860, only eight have been won by a player older than 43, making Jack Nicklaus‘ victory in the 1986 Masters, at age 46 all that more impressive.   Look for a top-10 finish for Phil.

Augusta National is the premier horses-for-courses venue and picking the winner is the easiest of all the majors because course familiarity is a huge advantage and some of the entrants are aging past champions who have no chance  The contest also boasts the smallest field of all the majors with 97 entrants in 2014.  The other majors routinely field more than 150.

I love the newer younger cast of characters because they all have great ability and are dynamite when they get hot, but each has a distinct weakness that prevents dominating performances from week-to-week.  Come Sunday evening, the tournament will pit four players head-to-head:  Rory McIlroy, Matt Kuchar, Adam Scott, and Jason Day.  Let’s take them in reverse order.

Jason Day will win The Masters this year.

Jason Day
From golfdigest.com

He’s been so close with a 3rd in 2013 and a T-2nd in 2011 and it is now his time.  Jason hit’s it a long way, knows the course very well, and has finally got his mind right.  I loved the way he kept his cool and closed at the WGC Accenture when Victor Dubuisson kept getting up-and-down out of trash cans, dumpsters, and desert cactus against him in the final.  Day’s weakness is his ability to control his distances under pressure.  He’s adjusted with a repeatable pre-shot routine and doesn’t deviate based on the situation.  Alan Shipnuck’s piece at Golf.com on Day is must reading for students of the mental game.  Day’s visualization techniques are more in-depth than any I’m aware of.  His fascination with Navy Seals training and affinity for hitting the gym are sounding Tiger-esque and I would caution him about taking too extreme an approach.  But for this week, as long as his sore thumb holds up, he wins his first major.

Adam Scott and Matt Kuchar will tie for second.  Scott is the horse for this course, has Steve Williams on the bag for steadiness and sense of purpose, and has the full compliment of tools.  He’s susceptible to getting on bogey runs which are protracted and seem to come at terrible times under pressure.  Yes, he pulled through last year in an epic moment for self and country, but his fellow Aussie will edge him out.  In the back of Scott’s mind has to be the upcoming ban on anchoring and how he will adjust.  Is it starting to affect his current work with the flat stick?

Kuchar plays well at Augusta, knows the course intimately, and has the temperament.  He won THE PLAYERS Championship, which is just as hard as a major, and is also ready.  Kuchar’s achilles heel is his driving distance.  He’s also mediocre in GIR and the fact that he’s so highly rated year after year in scoring average is a testament to his lights out short game and putting.  This new closed stance and slightly over the top move is supposedly getting the job done, but doesn’t bode well for the right to left ball flight needed at Augusta and will be just enough to hold him back.  Down the line shots at Shell indicate he’s made a slight correction from last week at Valero but still looks too closed to me.  Hopefully it helps him.

Rory McIlroy finishes alone in 4th.  The Northern Irishman is starting to look like Phil Mickelson from a roller coaster perspective.  When hot, there’s nobody better, but when his driving is off, it affects his mindset and his total game suffers.  Physically, he’s got the tools to be the best player in the world and is a multiple major winner.  He’s still young and it still may happen.  Now I need to see a serious run with no final round collapse.

Value picks for your Calcutta.  Look for Zach Johnson to make a run.  The 2007 champion had a great 2013 season, is hitting fairways and greens in 2014, but has slipped to 68th in total putting.

Nobody wins in his first attempt at Augusta, but I look at these three making their Masters debut to have an impact.  Jordan Spieth has the guts and the game to win a major-now.  Billy Horschel got real hot this time last year and has the confidence to contend.  Harris English has all the physical tools but needs more time under the gun.  Missing from the conversation is Jimmy Walker who’s leading the Tour in FedEx points and has three wins under his belt.  He kills it of the tee, putts great, but is only 86th in scrambling, which is a must have around Augusta.  While he’s shown steady improvement over the last five years, I don’t look for him to make a move in his Masters debut until he gets some experience chipping to these greens.

Masters Sunday is one of my favorite days of the year.  Play golf in the morning and settle into exciting final round coverage in the afternoon; I can’t wait.  Good luck in your pools!